Okay, this may seem unwelcome to some TES fans. I'm just raising this topic to address new avenues of possibility for our beloved series. Let's keep it civil and constructive please. Also, apologies if this topic has been raised already, just expressing an idea, keen for some feedback.


CHARACTER INTERACTION WITH THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

I would like to tentatively suggest that there could be implemented in Skyrim, a degree of physical interaction with the environment we will be gaming in, specifically, how a player character is able to touch/move/jump/swim/walk around in/climb/etc. in this world.

Now, I don't mean to alarm people with thoughts of cover based shooters (perish the thought), yet that game type provides us with some interesting possibilties. Imagine:

"A dragon is swooping down to make it's next attack on you. You are fighting atop a plateau, littered with small ruins from a previous settlement. Shield in one hand, axe in the other, you ready yourself as it gets closer. Just before it's searing hot flames catch you - you leap to the side, diving behind a small wall, as the flames lick the spot you were just in. Staying crouched you spy it wheel away. You pull out your bow notch an arrow, and staying hidden behind your cover, you draw the string back, aim for the eye, and fire."

Or

"You follow the guard from the shadows, silent, unseen. As he turns away from the battlements and heads down the stairs, you detatch yourself from the shadows and leap across the wall, sneak up to the wooden door, and quickly, with nimble fingers, unlock it with your trusty pick. Stealing into the room, and quietly shutting the door, you survey your next objective. As you prowl down the corridor, a light suddenly appears round the corner. Patrol! Silently, you vault over some barrels, and hide. Fortunately you are unseen, and you continue, till at last you reach a courtyard. You walk up to the base of the fort's walls... and start to climb. Finally reaching a window, you steal into the room, tread over to the bed and look down upon your sleeping target. You pull a dagger from your belt..."


This would be an example of how cover interaction could potentially be used to add another flavour to gameplay and story/atmosphere. Now, it would be dreadful if a project to design something like this turned into, say, Gears of War, where you simply duck and fire (without trying to discredit that game), but imagine the potential! Sneaking would become so much more interesting! Fights become more cinematic, intense and real.

But naturally we face the problem of having to fit this idea in so it is compatible with the game. It would have to compliment the gameplay, not detract or distract from the systems already in place.

Climbing, for example, could be dependant on a number of factors. Weight of items, armor type, encumberance, race, and skill. A heavily armed Nord, clad in full heavy armor, would be limited in his movements, and thus climb at a severely slow rate, and be unable to perform any daring acrobatic feat with grace. While, on the other hand, a Bosmer ranger, lithe, agile, could easily scale a wall, clad in easy-to-move-in light armor, leaping freely between paraqets. The Acrobatic Skill would (I assume) be the skill this ability falls under, with a high skill allowing better movement for someone even under the duress of heavy armor.

To give an example of how this feature could be used to preserve a sense of realism and add to gameplay, how cool would it be if you were knocked off a cliff or other such type of terrain, and had to wildly reach out to grab whatever passed your descent. A last effort scramble to grab hold of a jutting rock; hanging by the tips of you fingers, you hurl your weight at the wall and manage to regain purchase. Climbing back up you bellow a war cry, rechallenging your victor who had assumed you fall to death.

Yes, this idea has not really been addressed in any of TES games (least, not to my knowledge), but I think it raises some potentially cool ideas. If done well, it could be a wickedly cool addition to the game.

Inspiration for this can come from a number of games, where environment interaction is crucial to gameplay (Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Splinter Cell) and while I'm not saying we should blatantly copy+pasta their ideas, they provide the basics for which a system could be worked into Skyrim, or later TES.

I have a few more ideas as to how this could 'safely' be implemented into the game, but I thought I'd just present the general idea.

Am keen to hear thoughts/comments. But first, I have to get some lunch.

I believe the ideas you portray here are not far from any of our minds, just complex from a design standpoint. Basic movements such as crouching behind something to avoid conflagration or climbing a wall to enact an assassination are certainly enticing ideas. However, the games you mentioned incorporate those aspects as full features of the game. I believe TES:V can incorporate something akin to those games, but they would not be as complex or appealing.

So, I guess the question is: Can such interesting features be incorporated well enough into a game who would add them on as merely small additions?

Ducking behind something could be simple enough, we would just need a duck button. It simply would reduce your size, in hit box relation, and reduce your speed. The next problem would be for Bethesda to incorporate enough objects that would be useful in a 'dive for cover' situations. The majority of suitable cover in previous games cover your entire body or nothing at all.

Climbing, on the other hand, seems like it would be much more complex action. The entire vertical game world would need to be addressed for climbing capability. Morrowind and Oblivion added many miscellaneous "structures" to the game. Aside from city walls, we have large rocks, ruined structures, trees, and many miscellaneous vertical structures without full categories.

Well, that is my two Lincolns anyway.

Climbing sounds like a great idea, but getting behind cover is something that was totally in Oblivion. You could get behind cover to avoid being seen while sneaking by someone right beside you, provided the cover actually covered you. You could also get behind things to avoid enemy projectiles. Not as refined as some games, but it was there, and I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim expanded on this idea.

Again, climbing sounds fun, but it hasn't been a relevant issue in past games, so I can't be sure if it's really something necessary for Skyrim. If it's implemented it could end up being really cool though. A nice idea, if nothing else!

I think crouching behind cover is good enough for cover mechanics.

In terms of environment interaction:


1) Realistic physics and interaction with objects.

2) Ability to throw objects you are holding at an enemy, with realistic knockback effects.

3) Ladders and scrambling over low objects would be nice.

Hmmm, good points. Yes, it certainly does present a problem in being a minor feature, with so much work for it's addition. Ah, still, one can dream. Well, there is generally a waiting period of 5 years between TES games, maybe in number 6? :hubbahubba: yeah, it'd be great if the cover system in Oblivion was expanded to actual animations which showed you leaning against the wall etc.

And yes, natural features present difficult animations in climbing/navigation etc. Still, a 'dive for cover' move would be great, as well as rolling (a dive could be used when wearing heavy armor, as the Oblivion rolls from acrobatics were a bit ridiculous. Full plate, and flipping round the place like a Shaolin monk).

And yeah, ladders. A quick animation for them would be great. And the ability to knock the ladders down. Battle of Helms Deep, anyone?

I want assassins creed / infamous and demons souls combat in a massive world like oblivion.... yes... yeeusss

As much as I like your ideas (and your imagination), I think we have a long ways to go before games are able to portray either of the scenarios you outlined. Unfortunately, every time a game attempts either of the situations you proposed, it devolves into one of two things:
1) QTE style fight sequences (i.e. fighting the dragon, press B now to avoid fire, press A now to kill in a cinematic fashion),
or
2) Contextual actions (i.e. when near a wall press X to "snap" into cover)

Neither of these options really fit in with the Elder Scrolls series. I just don't think we have the technology in place right now to offer the kind of gameplay you suggested, without resorting to gimmicks. I would LOVE to have fights like the dragon scene you proposed, but games just aren't that dynamic yet. Unfortunately, with games like God of War (QTE-fest) and Heavy Rain (semi-interactive movie) becoming all the rage, I highly doubt we will see truly dynamic gameplay any time soon. Once we are able to plug games directly into our cerebral cortex and control motions and actions by thought, THEN we might be able to do what you are suggesting.

Actually, on the subject of cover, I would like to address the the implementation issue. I believe these key strokes could easily be enacted:

Doubt tap left, up, down, right: Based on your speed you make a quick foot long step in the designated direction.

Crouching + double tap: You roll in the desired direction.

Sprint key + double tap: You dive roll in the designated direction.

If combat is no longer button mashing but actually heart pumping, as the developers purport, then dodging will be highly useful.

Yes, it would be horrible to have 'Snapping' cover movement in TES, far too FPS.

And QTE, definately not. But the ability to innovatively execute moves that may not be specifically linked to react to an event (which is what QTEs are, eg, press X to dodge bosses heavy attack, now A to stagger him), but rather to at least use a move without being prompted to, that works within the confines of the game, a dive for cover being one such example.

And when that particular day comes I shall quit my job, having saved enough to live off interest, wake evey day at 5am, have a 2hour exercise session, spend a further 2hours in the real world, then play my cerebral cortex-wired game machine till the early hours of the morn, 'cos by then I will only need about 3hours sleep per day. Heaven.

Sorry, yes just read this, nice idea. Esp the quick step. I mean, we have dodge rolls, etc, but weve never had a realistic brawling/fighting side step. This would (I assume) be used to dodge a single sword stroke or some such, that would not interrupt a fight's flow. Hmmm...

Hmmm, but when games look no different than reality, and anything is possible in them, why would you ever come back to the real world? Kind like a self-imposed Matrix :blink:

As this is the Environment Interaction I thought I would share another example of a interesting way to use environment interaction, even though the conversation has strayed a bit. Imagine if you will,

As you walk through a dense forest you come upon a small clearing, as you walk through the clearing a dragon spots you from above (or from wherever, flying above a dense forest just made the most sense to me) it swoops down & attacks you, though you soon realize you can't win. You're almost dead when you spot a massive tree behind the dragon, in your last effort to win the fight you cast a lightning spell at the base of the tree, causing it to fall over crushing & killing the dragon.

When I cast a tornado spell (or any with similar effect), I would like to see plants being uprooted and small rocks flying around.

Yes, exactly, a level of interaction that detailed would be grand. Have some icecream. :icecream:

However, as some have pointed out, it would be a strenuous task to code everything to be interactive in such a manner, but it would be awesome. Smash the supporting base of a pillar so that it topples over and kills some bandits, breaks a wall down so you can enter a fort, etc. etc. etc. Hoever, that would fall under destructible terrain, and that is also aa tricky path to navigate.

The main problem is that all these gameplay aspects are not associated with the gametypes of Bethesda/TES, and their implementation would be tricky. As Limabeanmage said games which have made use of say, climbing, cover use or destructible terrain, all have these as a main gameplay feature. Assassin's Creed 2/Brotherhood has the great free running system, Gears of War has cover use and Red Faction had destructible environments. Combining all these would be a mammoth task, and difficult to get to work fluidly together.

Still I don't think the TES will be finishing anytime soon, so maybe in number 6 we can expect something else.

i thnk there will be enough stuff to hide behind in the game that is appropriate, but we will have to wait for an update to be sure :hubbahubba:

Cool Ideas but.

About the quote, that is nto going to work unless they remove the fact the guards are omniscient. As the guards always know which way you go, follow you when you are invisible, automatically know if you commit a crime and all that.

Yeah, that's always kinda bugged me. I saw in another thread somewhere that there could be a delayed alert to guards knowledge of your crimes from the point of origin. Eg, it takes a couple of days for news to be heard of your villainous acts in towns/cities that are far away.

And I wonder how guards' alerts will work in Skyrim? If no-one's there to see the crime, or if we kill witnesses/victims before they can report us. I think that would be good, as I remember there being some ambiguity in guards behaviour towards illegal activity, sometimes they'd come hunt you down straight away, sometimes get away scotch free. Anyone able to clarify the mechanisms, unless I'm just making them out to be more complex then they actually are?

I had said nearly exactly that on What We Want To See In Skyrim. I said,

I Didn't see this in the list so I'll suggest it, if I just didn't see it I apologize.

Not having every single guard in the game know when you commit a crime in one town.

Ex. make it so that you commit a crime in one town, guards in another town don't automatically know you what you did on the other side of Skyrim, have it take time for the word to spread, which can be dependent on severity of the crime & distance to the town.

Though I do not take full credit as a 'I did it! It was me! Only me!' thing, just noticed that was something I said in nearly exactly those words. As I'm sure someone else probably thought of it on a different thread, before me, but you never know.